A tourist, visiting Manhattan from some dust cloud in Wyoming, twanged: “Dang, if your town ain’t a mite noisome.” I then gently re plied: “Stick it, pal. In your three inches of native nothing, the loudest sound would be a buffalo burp.”

Adding to the din, I gave him a raspberry. The truth is, we no longer notice when new dishes break in the house, a car bangs a parked fender, my editors’ uncultured voices shout. It’s not just the mechanism inside my head getting so loose that when I walk, things rattle — no. This town’s noisy.

I visited a friend. Her Havanese yapped. Her Abyssinian mewed. Her big-mouthed parrot was telling her off. And then her mother-in-law arrived.

Having lost my library card years ago, the question is, where to go for quiet? Even in church, a guy behind me was cracking his knuckles in time with the hymn.

Apologies to Mr. Mayor Bloomy, our city’s decibels are high. Horse-drawn carriages rumble along. New bicycle-taxi guys curse in languages street cleaners in Albania don’t even speak. The city that never sleeps never whispers.

We talking honking horns? Sanitation trucks that grind and groan leftover veal bones into talcum while their guys shout to each other at 1 a.m.? Garbage cans tossed back onto the pavement with a clank? And a real sooth is some weirdo night-owl playing cymbals with those metal covers when they hit the street. How about yelling bus drivers? Angry car drivers. Skateboarders who scream, “Watch out!” after they smack into you.

A cabby’s erect middle finger makes no noise and the hoisting of his index finger is also silent — but wow! — do those digits speak volumes.

Try standing alongside a street cop’s piercing whistle. Or squeeze between passersby loudly grousing to one another: “My married pig boss made a pass at me . . . my unmarried stud boss didn’t make a pass at me.”

And that’s just what’s around you. Above are jets. Helicopters. Zeppelins. Flapping birds whose mothers never told them to shut their beaks when they eat.

Construction sites. Jackhammers. Demolition. Hardhats shouting. Foremen screaming. Crane operators yelling. Stuff crashing. Forget the buildings. It’s the contractors who should be condemned. The noise of machinery so overwhelms us that the detonating, drilling, dynamiting, digging, dredging, riveting, blasting just our nonexistent Second Avenue subway can still be heard on Eighth Avenue.

Kid bouncing a ball against a wall. And leave us not forget the newest charm. TVs in taxis and the drivers playing bellydancer CDs.

Laws forbid boomboxes blaring. So what? After a summons, they turn up the bass. Car radios so loud that Marlee Matlin can hear them. Stand outside your nosebleed maintenance place on Park Avenue, and you still hear trains clattering underneath.

We have not even touched on allergy season’s sneezing and coughing. Or for those who’ve just had a big Hungarian dinner — big-time belching.